Bibliometrics

Bibliometric analysis can help you to quantify, compare, and communicate the importance of your scientific work. This website briefly summarises what you need to know about bibliometrics and citation-based research evaluation.

Overview

Bibliometrics and Research Impact

Author-level metrics, such as the h-index, and journal-level metrics, such as the impact factor, are standard tools that are used in bibliometric analyses. Other approaches, for example altmetrics and analyzing activity in professional academic networks, play different roles in evaluating the impact of scientific work within a discipline. All metrics have limitations and should not be used as the sole source for assessment and evaluation.

Author Level Metrics

Publication and citation counts have traditionally been used to measure the research impact of an author’s work. Various author-level metrics based on citation analysis have been developed in recent years.

The most widely used is the h-index, which measures the productivity and impact of an author’s work. It states that “h” number of publications have been cited at least “h” times. Web of Science, Scopus, Google Scholar, and other databases can be used to calculate the h-index; however, as each of these databases has a different data source, the calculated h-index values will vary between databases. Further, the h-index will also vary with the date of calculation.

Authors can proactively work to make certain that all of their publications and citations are counted in the calculation of these indexes by creating unique author identification profiles using tools such as ORCID, ResearcherID, or Google Scholar Citations. The Scopus Author ID, which is automatically generated for every author, helps to ensure that the correct publications are assigned to the correct person within the Scopus database. Authors can use the Scopus Author Feedback Wizard to submit any necessary changes.

Journal Level Metrics

Journal-level metrics attempt to measure the reputation of individual journals. The most widely known and oldest of these indicators is the impact factor, which is used to rank the journals included in the Web of Science database. The impact factor is a comparison of the number of citations and the number of articles recently published within a journal. Impact factors are available through the database Journal Citation Reports.

Alternate journal-level measures include the Scimago Journal Rank, which uses citation data included in the Scopus database, and Eigenfactor, which uses data from the Web of Science.

Altmetrics

Altmetrics (from “alternative metrics”) are measures of online activity, which are gathered from social media or other online tools. Examples of these alternative forms of metrics range from the number of downloads or views that an article receives to the number of times it has been bookmarked in Mendeley or tweeted about. These metrics, which can be used for authors, institutions, journals, or articles are in their beta stage and are still being developed, although you can see an example of how the Public Library of Science (PLoS) is teaming up with the company Altmetric to use this type of information.

Use and Limitations of Bibliometrics

Using bibliometric data can help you with

increasing the visibility and impact of your research

promotion and review

identifying the most suitable journals for publication

identifying potential collaborators and areas for research

providing data for grant proposals. The grant application rules for each funding agency should be consulted to determine which data could be helpful. TUM ForTE, the Office for Research and Innovation, also offers consultations to assist researchers with questions regarding funding.

The use of bibliometric measurements is not a replacement for qualitative methods of evaluation. Care must be taken to use the appropriate metric for the appropriate purpose. For example, impact factors (a journal-level measurement) should not be used to assess individual researchers. Many metrics can also be influenced by the very different citation behaviors that exist in different disciplines or by intentional measures.

Increase your research impact and visibility

Author Profiles

Creating a profile with an author disambiguation service such as ORCID or ResearcherID, or creating a Google Scholar Citations profile can help to ensure that all of your scholarly work is correctly attributed to you.

Academic Networking

Using academic networking sites can facilitate the sharing of your publications and help you to connect with a wider network of scientists. Our overview on academic networking offers you a comparison between networking services such as LinkedIn, Xing, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley und Twitter.

Open Access

The TUM Publishing Fund offers financial support for the payment of open access publication fees.

ORCID iD

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a non-profit organisation, which provides unique identifiers (ORCID iDs) for authors. The ID allows to distinguish you from every other researcher – regardless of possible name variants or name changes due to marriage.

As a founding member of the German ORCID consortium, the TUM promotes the use of the ORCID iD and offers you the option to link your ORCID iD to your TUMonline account.

For more information on ORCID and the implementation of the ORCID iD at TUM please visit our ORCID webpages.

TUM Publication Guidelines

Publications by TUM scientists should be clearly attributed to TUM as the affiliated institution. This ensures that all your publications are taken into account in evaluations of TUM (rankings).

TUM has a standardized designation for stating the university affiliation, in both German and English, and binding regulations for their application. The Publication Guidelines apply to all staff members at TUM, as well as to guest researchers.

What is my research impact and how can I influence my h-index? How can I use academic identity management and social media for improving my presence on the internet? The course gives an overview of different issues with scholarly publication and improvement of research impact.

Would you like to analyse, improve, or simply better understand the impact of your research output? We will work with you to answer your questions about the use and meaning of metrics such as the h-index, Impact Factor, and more.